Should You Put Down Earnest Money On Bajillion Dollar Propertie$?

What Is This Thing?

At Platinum Realty, one of the premier firms in Los Angeles, big personalities sell even bigger homes for the biggest commissions imaginable. And now the agency's flamboyant founder, Dean Rosedragon, is about to name a partner to join him at the head of the company, for which he's testing his employees for suitability. Which will triumph, leaving the rest to be contented with their six-figure commissions?

When Is It On?

New episodes go up Thursdays on the new comedy streaming service Seeso. (It's not free: a subscription is $3.99 per month.)

Why Was It Made Now?

I guess Hulu's Hotwives spoofs of the Housewives franchise are doing well enough that Bravo's Million Dollar Listing franchise is ripe for exploitation too?

What's Its Pedigree?

The series was created by Kulap Vilaysack, also an actor and podcaster (Who Charted?). Her fellow producers include Kate Berlant, as of last week one of the stars of Netflix's The Characters; Alex Fernie (Childrens Hospital); and Brad Morris (Playing House). Among the cast: living comedy legend Paul F. Tompkins plays Rosedragon; Ryan Gaul (House Of Lies) is one of his realtors; and Tim Baltz (Drunk History) plays Glenn, Platinum's new office co-ordinator who's also clearly Rosedragon's spy and possibly his illegitimate son. Guest stars in the first couple of episodes include Adam Scott and Jason Mantzoukas, with many more comedy luminaries (including Comedy Bang Bang creator and host Scott Aukerman, who happens to be creator Vilaysack's husband.) Behind it all are executive producers Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, of Reno 911! fame.

...And?

Like all these sorts of spoofs, it evinces a deep, deep knowledge of the material that inspired it: the episodes are put together with the same beats, pacing, tone, recycled b-rolls, and Talking Head saltiness as any real Bravo show. Even the chyrons look the same. Some of the situations are heightened compared to what you'd see on an actual Bravo real estate show -- Rosegarden's custom chess set, with his employees as pawns, would be a bit sophisticated for any of the Million Dollar Listers to have come up with -- but the attention to detail is impressive.

Tompkins's Rosegarden is the character I was most looking forward to watching, and of course he does not disappoint: Rosegarden is a manipulative, grandiose lunatic whose look owes less to any Bravolebrity than it does a '60s-era Vegas "mentalist." Baltz is also very effective playing office weirdo Glenn, who's excited to play even a small part in such a glamorous organization, even if he can't imagine achieving anything as impressive as becoming a realtor himself, and thus is able cheerfully to absorb a lot of abuse from his self-involved new colleagues; he's not as weird as Kenneth The Page yet, but the characters are definitely both on the same spectrum.

...But?

You know how the vast majority of stories in The Onion aren't worth reading once the headline gives you the premise? That's kind of how it is with almost all of these slavishly accurate TV spoofs: they don't need to be very long. Burning Love worked (brilliantly) because it compressed the equivalent of a whole two-hour Bachelor episode into about ten minutes; same with Childrens Hospital and the medical procedurals it parodies. Bajillion Dollar Propertie$ was evidently produced with affection for its source, and carefully researched and produced. But the nature of the series premise -- loathsome people selling rich jerks' houses to other human garbage -- is already kind of repetitive. One listing per episode plus a B-story about the ongoing partner hunt would be plenty, and would only take up ten minutes; the two episodes I've seen have funny elements, but they just drag.

I can even imagine that this was originally conceived to be a quarter-hour-long show for Adult Swim, but that when it ended up a Seeso original, the decision was made that paying customers shouldn't be shortchanged with a show that's half the length of a standard comedy, and that since the show is semi-improvised, there was enough extra material to fill out another dozen minutes of airtime. And if that's not actually what happened...that's how watching it can feel.

...So?

Under any other circumstances, Paul F. Tompkins alone would be enough to make me hang in and see if the show got tighter as it went on. But I'm not paying $3.99 a month to watch this show as Seeso doles it out one episode at a time every week. I adore Tompkins -- we all do -- but this is not the vehicle I most want to see him in, and after the first couple of weeks of this setup, I would 100% forget to return for the next episode anyway.